Sinya Okayama's Kotobuki (Celebration) shelves is the masterwork in his series of furniture designs that translates Japanese pictographs into three-dimensional forms, allowing the object to be "read" (see Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1985-94-2). It was created for his one-man exhibition at Tokyo's Yurakucho Asahi Gallery in 1989, where critics commented on the expressive value and meaning such furniture had. Kathyrn B. Hiesinger and Felice Fischer, Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1994, cat. 228, p. 188.